Dick Cavett: When the Press Broke Down

We have, of late, been through many an eventful day. It seems like at least a decade ago that the assault on Don Imus was the Biggest Story Ever Told. I’m sure he’s grateful for the numbing events since then that have dwarfed his banishment. Virginia Tech gave the administration a little breather by drawing attention away, for a time, from George’s Folly.

What new awful headlines could possibly follow Virginia Tech? Well, we got variations on Abattoir Baghdad Sets Record for Carnage, Rosie Trumped, Pat Tillman Case a Shocking Army Lie, War Lost and, as if our hearts could endure any more breakage, the fall of pretty little Sanjaya, he of the curly locks.

The president has resumed harping on those who “think they know more than the generals.” O, for a member of the press with the fortitude to shout, “Like General Shinseki, sir?” And let’s not forget the other generals who asked for more troops in order to effect an exit from Iraq long ago, when it was still a possibility. But the odious Rumsfeld knew better. With all due respect, of course.

(What do you think would happen if, say, the excellent Martha Raddatz of ABC asked at a press conference, “Mr. President, it needn’t be a precise number, but has anybody calculated how many thousands of human beings would be alive today — if it weren’t for you?”)

And shouldn’t a candle be lighted to Bill Moyers? I don’t think I blinked three times while watching his great report on the complicity of the press in getting George’s Baghdad Follies launched?

That mammoth scandal is sick-making. And it wasn’t just a bootlicker here and there but rather the entire press establishment, including our two biggest papers. (You know which ones they are.) There was nary a naysayer in sight, with the shining exception of the canceled Phil Donahue, who refused to roll over like a spaniel puppy and who’d been ordered to “have two conservatives on for every liberal” on his show. Phil was disposed of.

There were exceptions, hopelessly outnumbered. Seeing how the Knight-Ridder guys (John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel) got it right is at once gladdening and depressing. They had no outlet in New York or Washington, and thus were too small potatoes for the stately titans of the press to acknowledge or pick up on. Their influence paled beside that of, say, Judith Miller of The New York Times, the Buddy Rich of drumbeaters for the war, who lacked the vital skepticism and fact-checking habits of the non-ersatz journalist.

She had plenty of high-class company. Joseph Pulitzer must have done 45 r.p.m. is his grave.

One’s mouth gaped at the who’s who of prominent names who shirked appearing on the show. Among the scared were William Kristol of the Weekly Standard and Miller, Thomas Friedman and William Safire of The Times.

Tim Russert showed up, as did Donahue and Dan Rather. And Bob Simon of “60 Minutes.”

Many of us owe Mr. Cheney an apology. It seems it was not the new Tricky Dick who gave birth to that happy phrase “greeted as liberators.” It was one of the war’s most feverish boosters, Safire, an expert on language if not on war. Cheney, of course, parroted it.

This magnificent documentary should be required viewing for anyone above the intelligence level of those dear souls who believe “professional wrestling” is unrehearsed (or were encouraged by Alberto Gonzales’s amnesiac act).

I like Gen. David H. Petraeus, whose very blandness of delivery seems, paradoxically, to highlight such utterances as “This could get worse.” Set against the chorus of yappers and bores and lickspittles in the administration and Congress, he comes off — for a welcome change — as an adult in the picture.

One element in the show literally (yes, literally) made my stomach hurt. Seeing Colin Powell, a man universally admired in former times, urging us on to the current calamity. And to a much greater degree than can be seen in just that oft-used United Nations film clip. Must all idols have clay feet? Or, as here, bloody ones?

Do you think anyone will buy my idea for a book? The title is “How Can America Be a Great Country Having Put This Crowd in Office?”